Recipe for Being More Productive: Work Less?

Want to get more work done? Then you should do less. This might sound odd, but it's the advice of Margaret Heffernan, who has been the CEO of several companies. Using BP as an example and citing a cognitive scientist, she argues that limiting the number of hours people work will actually improve the final product of their efforts. She writes:

In a knowledge economy, where thinking and creativity are the raw materials from which products and profit flow, brains are assets. They need to be cherished, nurtured and protected, not abused. Leaders need to take seriously a century's evidence that 1) overwork doesn't make us productive, it makes us stupid, 2) looking away from a problem is often the best way to solve it, and 3) burnout is what happens when people are asked to work in ways that obliterate all other parts of their lives.

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Daniel Indiviglio was an associate editor at The Atlantic from 2009 through 2011. He is now the Washington, D.C.-based columnist for Reuters Breakingviews. He is also a 2011 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow through the Phillips Foundation.